Effects of art education on the development of personality of pupils – a field study of teaching process

Hypothesis
1. Prabha Saharsbudhe postulates that dealing with art strengthens the power of understanding and helps to comprehend the meaning of one’s own experience.
2. Art education as such is no guarantee for personality development. Some methods are more relevant for personality development while others are developing useful visual skills but do not touch on the human experience: self-consciousness and knowledge of the world.
3. An optimal time for personality development through art is adolescence, when verbal expression fails to reveal the richness and variety of the growing identity. Visual symbolisation in adolescence is equally important and powerful as in the years of “fabulous realism” of the young child aged 3-6.
To prove this, we developed a comparative study of the effects on personality development of students in Finnish, German, Hungarian and Spanish art education.
Research plan:
Teachers’ awareness of developmental potentials of different methods of art education, found out by interviews, classroom observations etc.
The effects of certain methods on personality development:
Student population:
Schools selected in Germany, Finland of Hungary to represent differing methods that seem to be relevant for personality development
School level: lower secondary, ages 14-.16
Number of subjects: 20-30 per country
Duration of the experiment: max. 6 months treatment, with pre-and post tests and tasks
Developmental program:
Planning by the international research team and the local teachers: standardised lesson plan format to allow comparison
Standardised data collection sheet for students
Max. 6 month, 1-2 lesson hours per week, complemented with project type homework, or special program
Teacher: the regular art educator of the school
Context for the study:
National / regional / school art curriculum
School context: (art) educational culture of the experimental schools
Art related to attitudes of the class
Teaching strategies and art related attitudes / values of the art teacher
BacMethods:
Spain: installation
Hungary: new media – personal home as expressive medium
Finland: integration of senses – a polyaesthetic project
Germany: improvisation with different traditional two-dimensional media (paint, chalk, crayon, etc.) art production
Evaluation:
Pre- and post test (standardised psychological test battery available in the foru countries as national standards
Digital portfolio
Traditional portfolio and logbook
Interviews
Art teachers
Selected students (based on portfolios)